Please archive under: DEATH-P AMNESTY Short description: "Amnesty International Pamphlet on DP" (I am still officially not here; especially in light of the uncertain future, I am spending a few minutes here and there to format the files which have been sitting around but were all but ready to be archived) ################################################################## From an Amnesty International pamphlet... ======================================================== T h e D e a t h P e n a l t y : C R U E L & I N H U M A N P U S H I M E N T ======================================================== [Send the 1-line message GET DEATH-P AMNESTY ACTIV-L to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET for a copy of this file] "I regard the death penalty as a savage and immoral institution that undermines the moral and legal foundations of a society. I reject the notion that the death penalty has any essential deterrent effect on potential offenders. I am convinced that the contrary is true -- that savagery begets only savagery." -- Andrei Sakharov - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Amnesty International works for the abolition of the death penalty as part of its continuing efforts to protect human rights around the world... In more than 25 years' experience documenting human rights abuses, Amnesty International has seen that the death penalty does nothing to make society safer. A people's security is threatened when government shows its abhorrence of violence by perpetrating violence. In recent years many countries have recognized this and abolished the death penalty. In 1976 Canada outlawed capital punishment. France did the same in 1981. In 1987 East Germany abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In fact, the United States is the only western industrial nation which still practices capital punishment. [..] In the United States, several people each month are legally killed. Today [1989], over 2,200 men and women wait for their end on America's death row, more than the total number of people reportedly executed worldwide last year. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder." -- Coretta Scott King THE DEATH PENALTY DOES NOT DETER VIOLENT CRIME People who favor the death penalty often believe it helps reduce violent crime. This would be true only if the person who considers homicides makes a rational [!] decision with the expectation of arrest, conviction, death sentence, and finally execution. In fact, this is not true. Most people who murder do not see beyond their action; they kill quickly in moments of great fear or emotional stress and under the influence of drugs or alcohol. When the crime is premeditated, the individual rarely believes he or show will be apprehended or executed. In the past 25 years dozens of researchers have analyzed crime statistics for evidence that capital punishment affects the crime rate. After reviewing these studies in 1976, the United State Supreme Court found no conclusive evidence that the death penalty deters violent crime. The United National came to similar conclusions. The studies show that murder rates in a death penalty state such as Illinois differ little from another with a similar population density without the death penalty such as Michigan. In some cases, states and countries that have abolished the death penalty show a decrease in homicides. In 1975, the year before Canada abolished the death penalty, its homicide rate was 3.09 per 100,000. In 1986 the rate was down to 2.19, the lowest in fifteen years. Police officers and prison guards are not murdered more frequently in states without the death penalty than in states where it exists.[..] The use of the death penalty may in some cases increase the crime rate. In New York between 1903 and 1963 individual execution were followed by a slight rise in the state's homicide rate. The punishment of death offers potential murderers attention and even fame not experienced by those who are sentenced to life imprisonment. More significant is the possibility that legal execution may stimulate violent crime by exemplifying society's approval of killing. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T H E D E A T H P E N A L T Y I S I R R E V E R S I B L E The death penalty is the only fatal and absolutely irreversible punishment. An innocent person who has been mistakenly executed can never be brought back to life. As the number of executions increases, so does the probability of error. Since 1900 in the United States an average of one convicted murderer per year was later found innocent. A 1987 Stanford Law Review Study showed that in this country, 23 innocent person shave been executed in the past century. [and many more innocent people who were not executed by came close] Freddie Pitts and Wilbert Lee were lucky, but not before they had spent 12 years in jail, most of them [the years] under sentence of death, for the murder of two white gas station attendants in Florida. The two black men were accused of committing the murders, but later the key witnesses against them withdrew their testimony and another man confessed to the crime. In 1975 two innocent men were released. They would have been dead already if their appeals had not by chance run out during a temporary, court-imposed moratorium on executions. Frighteningly enough, two more innocent men were released from prison this year, convicted of murders they did not commit. Randal Dale Adams spent 12 years in a Texas prison and James Richardson, 25 years in Florida's jail. Both men were on death row for crimes they did not commit only, to be spared similarly to Pitts and Lee by the court-imposed moratorium on executions. Timothy Evans was not as lucky. The British people's shock at discovering that the innocent man had been executed was a major reason for the abolition of capital punishment in Great Britain. Execution of innocent people is not the only occasion for error in a capital case. The court must make absolute decisions about circumstances that may not be so clear-cut: defendants' personal participation in a murder, their sanity, whether they were provoked into committing the murder, or whether they pose a further threat to society. The finality of the death penalty is also significant when a new court decision invalidates previous death sentences. In 1977, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is excessively harsh punishment for the crime of rape. This verdict came too late for the 455 men executed for that crime since 1930. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T H E D E A T H P E N A L T Y I S A L O T T E R Y Even if one dismisses the risk of executing the innocent as minuscule or a necessary evil, the death penalty is still administered with extreme randomness. With roughly 20,000 homicides each year in the United States, about 4,000 people are convicted or murder and about 250 are sentences to death. Nearly half of these sentences are set aside in the appeals process. The public often assumes that a small portion of criminals who are on death row are there because they have committed the most horrible crimes. [..] but usually their crimes cannot be distinguished from those of hundreds of others whose lives have been spared. In some cases two people equally involved in the same murder are given entirely different punishments: one is sent to prison, the other to the electric chair. The system of death sentencing is like a lottery determined by countless random factors, such as the attitudes of police and prosecutors, the skill of court-appointed defense counsel, and the prejudices of judges and juries. Some judges and some states hand out the death sentences more frequently than others. For example, Florida has more than 294 people on death row; Connecticut one. A defense lawyer can lose his client's life simply by neglecting to make a legal objection at just the right moment. "The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment.... While police and law enforcement officials are the strongest advocates of capital punishment, the evidence is overwhelming that police are no safer in communities that retain the sanction than in those that have abolished it. It also is evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor the ignorant, and the underprivileged members of society." -- United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall Whether a person convicted of murder will live or die is not merely a question of chance. Throughout the world capital punishment is usually applied in a discriminatory way against minorities and the poor. This is also true in the United States where since 1972, over 65 percent of the people on death row have been unskilled, service, or domestic workers and 60 percent where unemployed at the time of their crimes. A study of the Texas judicial system found that three out of four convicted murderers with court-appointed lawyers were sentenced to death, as opposed to one out of three with private attorneys. ================================================================== Arrests and Sentences for Criminal Homicide by Race of Victim and Offender Florida, Georgia, and Texas 1976-1978 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Race of Arrested for Under Sentence of Death offender/Victim Crim. Homicide Number Percent Black/Black 1,099 16 1.5 White/White 1,013 125 12.33 Black/White 92 82 89 White/Black 38 2 5.25 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Totals 2,242 225 ------------------------------------------------------------------ [Center for Applied Social Research, Northeastern University, Boston] ================================================================== In the United States blacks and other minorities face a much greater likelihood of execution than whites similarly charged. Since 1930, 90 percent (405) of the men executed for rape were black. The victim's race still factors heavily in determining the offender's punishment. * In Texas black who kill white are six times more likely to receive the death sentence than those with black victims. * In Florida, black offenders who murder whites are forty times more likely than whites who kill blacks to end up on death row. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE DEATH PENALTY IS NO WAY TO SHOW THAT KILLING IS WRONG [..] If capital punishment is appropriate because it takes a life for a life, why doesn't the government also burn the arsonists's home and rape the rapist? Because *justice* does not mean punishment that imitates the crime. THE DEATH PENALTY IS A SYMBOL -- NOT A SOLUTION Perhaps the most harmful cost of the death penalty results from the false assumption that it helps to fight crime. Although the death penalty has no effect on reducing the crime rate, many politicians advocate execution to show they are taking steps to make America safer. This empty gesture distracts society's attention from the difficult challenge of finding effective solutions to the very real problems of violence. ... The death penalty teaches that killing is sometimes acceptable, while denying the fundamental humanity of all people -- including those who commit atrocious acts. With each execution, the United States further numbs itself to the tragedy of states-sanctioned killing and undermines its ability to address the human rights violation of other countries and undermines its respectability within the world community. ################################################################## ################################################################## # Harel Barzilai for Activists Mailing List (AML) # ################################################################## To join AML, just send the 1-line message "SUB ACTIV-L " to the address: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET; you should receive a message confirming that you have been added to the list. 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